


letting go (and letting fall)

by etben



Category: Stargate: Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:51:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etben/pseuds/etben
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Less than a month here, and already Ronon knows how it will go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	letting go (and letting fall)

**Author's Note:**

> Written originally for stargateanon.

Less than a month here, and already Ronon knows how it will go.

There will be a sky, breathless-blue, the color of his mother's favorite dress, of his best friend's eyes, of the baby birds that used to live outside his window. A field, too—always, there's a field. They'll send Ronon out to survey while Teyla measures and weighs with her dark eyes, testing the mettle of these newest allies.

He won't know what's growing, of course—he's a city boy. Even when he ran (and he ran, and he ran), he stayed to edges and outsides of things. Farming is a thing of stillness, of waiting. You have to get down and _in_, reach to the root of things and twist it to your wanting, and then stand there to watch it grow up around you. It seems, to him, to involve a great deal of expectation and hope, two things he's had precious little of, these last several.

On Atlantis, they tend not to notice this. Not that they don't know that he was a Runner—just, on some level, they don't understand what it means. It's just another word, to them. It's what comes of growing up fat and happy in that galaxy of theirs, he thinks—they run for fun, or sometimes for training, but never because they're being chased.

And that's only one of the ways this place has of being wrong. The walls are more like Sateda's spires than anything he's seen on the worlds he's visited, but without the green haze of old moss and the intricacies of vines to offset their brilliance. The food has all the smells he knows, the spices of his mother's kitchen and of his grandmother's, but the Lantians combine them in ways that make his nose sting and his eyes ache, serve them raw or scorched or at the wrong meals, marring familiar flavors with unsettling textures.

The days are longer, but the quality of the light is changed, too—clearer, somehow, and brighter, but the angle of the light across the end of his bed is the same.

The sounds are all wrong—the worst, maybe. The Lantians have learned the Ring-Speech, all of them, and they use it when they speak to him, even when the Ring stays closed long enough for the Help of the Ancestors to leave them. This is right and good; all the worlds of the Ring know to use the Ring-Speech with outworlders, as a courtesy and out of convenience. The knowledge is there, pushing out your ears; it takes effort and focus to use Birth-Speech instead. To do so in the presence of others, to knowingly use a language your guest cannot understand, is—was—unacceptable.

He stands in the doorway for some time before the man turns and sees him. Ronon's still not entirely sure of his name, which seems to change from day to day, or from hour to hour: sometimes he is _Rodney_ and sometimes _McKay_, sometimes _Doctor_ and sometimes _Jesus_. On particularly bad days, he is a combination of these, a bewildering rattle of naming and honor that the Ring does not translate. It filters through his ears untouched, settles in Ronon's mind with a dull weight, yet another wall between him and these people.

When the man sees him, he doesn't drop anything. Ronon had been expecting him to, and is pleasantly surprised to see that, though he tenses, he doesn't drop the bundle of wires and glittering glass in his hands. It bodes well for the future. He sets it gently on the table, sets his hands to either side of it, and stares back at Ronon.

Ronon's been stared at by plenty of people—parents and siblings and lovers and fellow-fighters, John Sheppard, Elizabeth Weir. This man is not the worst of these, but his stare is steady and solid, leaving nothing out. Ronon stands at the door, and can feel himself being measured, measured, measured.

"Can I come in?" Ronon asks, not really interested in staring contests.

"Depends," the man says, "Are you planning on pinning me against the wall for no apparent reason? Because if that's the case, the answer is no." His tone is matter-of-fact, almost dismissive, and his words are harsh, but he speaks in the Ring-Speech, the mellow tones and gliding sibilants flowing across the room, and it feels almost like approval. He turns away from Ronon, heading toward one of the other tables, and Ronon takes this as an invitation to come and sit on one of the spindly-legged chairs.

"That was an accident," he says, steadying his weight with one hand on the table behind him. Across the room, the man snorts, jerking his head in something like a nod.

"Yes, of course it was. You had no intention of bruising and terrifying one of the only halfway-competent programmers on the expedition, did you? Jesus, now I'm going to have to do it myself, in between saving our sorry asses on a twice-weekly basis."

"What is—_Jesus_?" Ronon asks, knowing this is probably rude but knowing, too, that it is better to know than to not. The man jerks, turning around to stare at Ronon again, mouth agape and hands fluttering idly.

"You don't—I mean, doesn't it translate?" He gestures vaguely, signifying the Ring or the ancestors or Atlantis itself, Ronon doesn't know. When Ronon shakes his head, though, he sighs and explains. "Jesus was—well, a saint, does that translate?" It does, and Ronon waves for more explanations. "Right, a saint, but now the name is used for—oh, for curses and exclamations, stuff like that." This makes sense, but there is more to ask, though the man laughs at him for it.

"Me? No, God, no—God, another exclamation, just—no, no. I'm Rodney, Rodney McKay." He shakes his head, laughing again. "And nobody thought to explain this to you? Of course not." His laugh is loud and abrasive, but his eyes are kind and concerned.

"_Doctor_ is your rank, then?" McKay starts to shake his head, but then stops, nodding slowly. "You could say that, yes—I mean, that's not how I'd generally think of it, but it's actually pretty accurate. Dr. Weir—Elizabeth—she's a doctor too, and Zelenka, and most of the other people who work here." Ronon nods. For a moment, it seems like McKay is going to say something more, but the time passes, and his stare moves back to the slick tangle of cables and edges on the table, his hands dancing in and around, arranging and rearranging.

"You speak the Ring-Speech well," Ronon says, unsure if he is meant to stay or to go. McKay looks up and over at him again, but his hands never stop moving, looping wire around and under and through, weaving bright glass and sharp wire into a tapestry of knowledge.

"Hm? Oh, yes, that. Well, if everyone can understand it, there's no sense in fighting it. I can be just as brilliant in Modern Standard Ancient as in English, trust me." He huffs out a breath, silent and amused. "Modern Standard Ancient—and they wonder why I have no respect for the soft sciences! Honestly, if I could just—"

"They didn't," Ronon says, "in the dining hall. They used your _English_—" the word is strange on his tongue, and he sounds it out slowly, "—instead of the Ring-Speech, when I was there." McKay raises an eyebrow at him, his hands slowing to fall still in his lap. The pressure of his stare is a weight between Ronon's shoulders, crushing an explanation out of him.

"On Sateda," he says, watching the way his hands wrap around each other, "that was—rude. Very rude." Not hangings, not for that, but beatings, correctional exams, long hours spent in a white room with nameless men. He doesn't know anyone—didn't know, didn't know anyone—without the scars, on the edges of his palms and the backs of his knees.

Past his hands, he can see McKay's shadow; it nods, and then stands, brushing over Ronon's feet in lines of hard-edged darkness. Next to him, McKay's breath is soft and unhurried, and his hand on Ronon's shoulder is warm.

"Far be it from me to state the obvious," he says, "but this is not Sateda."

Long after he leaves, Ronon sits in the darkened room, watching the unchanging floor and thinking on that.

The next day, there is a mission, and a field. Ronon doesn't know what's growing, but it's mattering less and less. This is not Sateda, and the shape of his life can change, here. And after all: the sky is still blue.


End file.
